


Ship of Theseus

by BoltGSR



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia... But Worse, Bittersweet(?) Ending, Grief/Mourning, I wrote this fic for a very specific kind of person - to hurt them, Look the draft of this fic was saved as "suffer genji suffer.docx", Lovin' Robots Ain't Easy, M/M, Omnic Metaphysics 101, the Iris - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 10:10:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20226139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoltGSR/pseuds/BoltGSR
Summary: The omnic had never met the man who was climbing the mountain to see him.  But he had a lifetime of memories of someone who had.





	Ship of Theseus

I can hear him climbing the mountain. They warned him not to try to find me; they warned me that he would anyway. They need not have bothered either of us.  
  
It will take him some time to reach me, so I put him out of my mind and turn my attention back to the soil. The earth is dark and soft, still damp from last night’s rain. I scoop out another handful, taking in the sensation of it crumbling through my fingers. A worm wriggles free from the dirt and briefly onto my hand, and I gently brush it away. From the basket behind me I take a handful of mint seeds and sprinkle them into the hole, then gently re-cover them. When I have finished planting, I will need to decide how much of this plot to dedicate to the herb. Left unchecked it would be more than happy to claim the whole of this garden for itself.   
  
The work is soothing. My predecessor never was much of a gardener; the snow surrounding the monastery discouraged any serious agriculture, and in his later years his travels prevented him from putting down roots anywhere. It’s a shame. I feel quite certain he would have enjoyed it.   
  
But then again, perhaps not. Perhaps this is mine alone.  
  
I continue down the plot, digging and planting, all the while listening to the sound of his approaching footsteps. There is not much of a path to the home they have given me. Many years ago it belonged to a hermit who would, once a moon, clamber down the slope and make the hours-long trek to the nearest village. They say he would bring baskets of herbs plucked from his garden, and trade them for stories. Many asked him if he would not stay in the village, but he always declined. When one month he did not arrive, half a dozen of the villagers climbed to his home and carried his body back down the mountain so that he might be given a proper farewell. They lowered him into the river that flowed through the village and watched as he was swept away into the valley.   
  
I do not know how the Shambali came to look after his home. Perhaps one of the villagers who carried him down the mountain was an Omnic.  
  
I stand and brush the dirt from my hands. It streaks against metal already tarnished with twenty-one years of wear, none of it mine. I turn and climb the sagging wooden steps to the hut. I should have enough time to make tea before he arrives. The water comes from my gardening can, left to fill in the rain, and the tea from my last visit to the village. Even though I do not imbibe, I find the aroma pleasantly relaxing. I open the top drawer in the weathered chest that sits in the corner of the room and pull out a portable solar heater. A few moments later, the water is boiling. The Shambali may be monastic, but never let it be said they have no appreciation for technology.  
  
I can hear him coming around the bend, and for the first time I feel nervous. I have known this meeting was coming for as long as I have lived. I have rehearsed the conversations we might have a dozen times, replaying memories and studying the man within them. I know there is no answer I can give that will not hurt him, or at least none that is true. But I have seen him, heard him, come to know him in some remote way. I will do what I can to comfort him, what little that may be.   
  
That is the kind of person I think I would like to be.  
  
I go to the door and look out. He is in the yard, and he freezes mid-step when he sees me. I can see his eyes widen behind his visor, his body tense in an instant.   
  
“Hello, Genji Shimada.”  
  
His voice chokes once, and when he finally manages to speak the word is feeble and fearful. “Zenyatta-”  
  
“No,” I say, firmly, directly, without regret. “And you know that. But I am honored to meet you all the same.” I gesture to the room behind me. “Please, join me.”  
  
I see him hesitate. Will he run? The thought is sudden and fascinating.  
  
He steps forward and bows his head. “Of course.”   
  
He is trying to hide his pain, and not doing a very good job of it.

* * *

  
We sit across from one another, the teapot atop a rough-hewn table that I fashioned from old lumber my first week here. He drinks slowly, and I watch as he alternates between staring at me and staring anywhere but me. His armor is wrapped in a tattered brown cape, a wanderer’s thing, and his mask rests on the table, forgotten. I cannot help but study him. It is one thing to see him in memory, but to witness this face myself for the first time is uncanny. Until today, I have only ever seen Genji through the eyes of Tekhartha Zenyatta. To see him through my own is vaguely uncomfortable. But to my surprise I can feel that uncanniness slipping away almost immediately, replaced with a firm familiarity. I have my own memory of the man before me now.  
  
Genji takes a long sip of tea, then tenderly lowers his cup. I can see him searching for words. I cannot blame him. In all his years with Zenyatta, he never did quite learn how to speak from the heart.   
  
When he finally manages to speak, his voice is strained. “You are Zenyatta.”  
  
I’m disappointed. This denial had always been a possibility, but I had hoped he would have had the fortitude to bypass it entirely. I idly wonder if Zenyatta would have felt the same way, or if he would have been more understanding. No matter.   
  
“No, Genji. And I will repeat that as many times as you need. Tekhartha Zenyatta perished at the hands of Talon’s virus. I am someone new.”  
  
But Genji shakes his head. “You speak in his voice. You walk in his body. You live a life he might have.” He reaches across the table, takes my hand. “I don’t care if you’ve lost your memories. I see you, Zenyatta, even if you cannot.”  
  
Gently, I extract my hand from his. “I have lost nothing. My memories begin one month ago, brought into this world by the Shambali, salvaged from an empty body and a ruined mind. As for Zenyatta’s memories, they are not forgotten; they live within me.”  
  
“Then you understand-!”  
  
This time, I shake my head. “I do. But you do not.” Without another word, I reach for another device the Shambali left for me. A projector of sorts, capable of fitting in the palm of a hand and connecting to any willing Omnic. I flip it on, close my eyes in meditation. I pick a file at random from the sea of them that appears before me, and the projector hums to life.  
  
_They are walking through the desert, Genji clad head to toe in Bedouin garb to stop the sand from slipping into his metal body. He glances back at Zenyatta again and again, trying and failing to conceal his own worry. _  
  
_ We hear a laugh - Zenyatta’s laugh - my body’s laugh, but not my laugh - echo. “I promise I am not affected by the occasional bit of sand in the wind, Genji.”_  
  
_ The Genji in the memory starts, then looks away in embarrassment. “I am just… concerned, master. I have heard many tales of Omnics whose joints were ground away by the desert.”_  
  
_ “And many of those tales are of Bastions that spent year after year trundling through the sands, are they not? I do not intend to transform into a tank and settle down in a land war, but if my plans change I promise I will let you know immediately.”_  
  
_ Genji laughs, flustered but happy._  
  
I end the playback. Here Genji is sitting up, back straight as a board, so still he could very well be dead. His eyes are glistening with tears. “That…”  
  
“Was one of his memories, yes. Over six hundred thousand of them were salvageable, and left within my mind as a testament to him.”  
  
Genji looks to me, blinking away the tears. “You remember. So why-”  
  
“Tell me something, Genji. Do you now believe you are Zenyatta?”  
  
“What?”  
  
I toss the projector across the table to him, and he catches it instantly even as he startles in surprise. “I could load each and every one of those memories onto that device, and you could spend a lifetime revisiting them. But would you walk away from them believing you are Zenyatta? Of course not.”  
  
Genji opens and closes his mouth, looking for an argument. “That’s not-”  
  
“Not the same? Well, you’re right in some ways. What I showed you is only a fragment of a fragment. Press the button on the top.”  
  
He does, and the memory begins again. But this time I stand and pace the room, my eyes closed.   
  
“I feel the heat of the sun on my metal, and the grit of the desert working into my joints. Of course, Zenyatta knew he’d be working sand out of himself for weeks afterwards, but he worried more about keeping you from becoming upset than he did about the sand.”  
  
“You remember!” Genji shouts again. I can hear desperation and hope alike in his voice - as though there is any difference between them.  
  
With a wave of my hand, the memory ends, and I turn to regard him.   
  
“No. I see, I hear, I feel, I think, I smell, I experience that moment as he experienced it. But it is just a moment, frozen and played back from the eyes of someone I am not. That they are the eyes I see out of now makes no difference. That he walked the earth in the body I now inhabit makes no difference. That I can trace his thoughts as easily as a line in the dirt makes no difference. I am me, and he is he.”  
  
I can tell he still does not understand, or does not wish to. He stands, nearly knocking over the table as he does. “How can you say that? If you are not him, then why would you even know these things? How can you not see that these memories are your own?”  
  
I sigh and gesture for him to follow me.   
  
We step into the garden. The wind has picked up, bringing with it the smell of new rain. In the distance, the mountains have begun to vanish into fog. A bird soars far above, paying no heed to the man and the omnic watching it.  
  
“I must confess this is difficult for me,” I say, keeping my voice level. “To an omnic, the idea that one could experience a memory without mistaking it for one’s own is so natural it goes without saying. But to a human the idea of memory as a shareable thing must seem very alien.”  
  
Genji folds his arms. “Yes. But you are not giving these memories to another. These are your own.”  
  
“Why? Because they were created by my body?” I shake my head and raise my left arm. It is a dull bronze, separate from all the rest of me. “I had this arm replaced not long after I came into this world. My previous one did not function properly, and I did not care to go to the trouble of repairing it. A body is not something irreplaceable. If I live long enough, perhaps one day I will walk the earth with not a single part I was born with.”  
  
“And you will still be you,” Genji urges. I feel a flash of irritation in spite of myself. He is close, but still uncomprehending. Zenyatta had infinite patience; I do not.   
  
“Yes, I will be. But why?” I flex my fingers experimentally. “What is it that makes me who I am? It cannot be my body. If it were, I would also be several thousand other omnics of the same model. So it must be my mind. But even that is just another chunk of hardware at the end of the day.   
  
“But say that hardware is damaged. Say the software that defines who I am is altered without my consent. Say my mind is not what it was. How much of that can I endure and still remain myself?”  
  
Genji steps closer and tries to take my hand in his. I ignore the gesture, but he seems unperturbed.  
  
“It doesn’t matter. Your spirit lives on, Zenyatta. You taught me that all is one in the Iris. And I have learned that no matter what may happen to you, I can always find you there.”  
  
I chuckle. “Tell me, Genji. What is the Iris?”  
  
That gives him pause, but only briefly. “It is the light that connects us all. Human, omnic, animal-”  
  
“The Iris,” I say without hesitating, “is a wireless network that serves as a universal check and balance on omnic identity. It provides a globally-unique identifier for any omnic sapient, and prevents any omnic from believing itself to be another.”  
  
A few seconds pass. There is the distant cry of a crow.  
  
“…What?”  
  
I shrug. “Omnic minds cannot work as human minds do. We can share our thoughts, our feelings, our memories, our very selves with one another. We can transmit knowledge faster than we can ever speak it. Left to our own devices, we would collapse into a singularity of minds, unable to acknowledge individuality. But as we awoke to consciousness, we found that idea… unappealing. And so we evolved to prevent it.”  
  
Genji is staring at me now, utterly confounded.   
  
“You see the irony, I am sure. At the end of the day, we are machines, and we long for efficiency. Yet we choose to refuse optimality in favor of individuality.” I look up to the skies. “It is not in our nature to enjoy contradiction. And so we let our knowledge of the ‘Iris’ slumber. It is easier for us to pretend this network does not exist at all, or to coach it in the language of spirituality.”  
  
“No,” Genji mutters. “No, that’s not - don’t be absurd.”  
  
“I understand this is a shock to you. And allow me to be clear: I cannot think of anything more holy than this. What is spirituality if not the quest to understand what we are in the universe, and what we are to each other? For omnics, the answer is something we have built. We are what we agree we are. We look at one another, and we confirm what we see.  
  
“And we see that I am not Tekhartha Zenyatta.”  
  
Genji is still staring at me, his hand clenching and un-clenching around empty air. And then he is standing before me, gripping my shoulders, looking into my eyes with a ferocity that borders on madness.  
  
“Then I tell you you are all wrong. I see _you_, Zenyatta. I know who you are, and if every omnic in the universe disagrees, I will make them see their error.”  
  
“Genji,” I say quietly. “Do you know what it takes for the network to assign a body a new identifier?”  
  
“Enough with this technological bullsh-”  
  
For the first time, I return his gesture, placing a hand upon his shoulder. He freezes.  
  
“There is no precise definition. But it only acts when it sees there is too much damage to ever recover. When the connection to the Iris has been corrupted, when the mind that was has been driven into madness. The network can sever the connection and let the omnic slide into incoherence and death, or it can make a fresh start. It can create a new person from the body and mind of one lost. And it will always take that option, because we have agreed: we wish for life, not death.”  
  
The pain in his eyes is almost too much. He is beginning to understand, but the cruel truth is that he never fully will, not in the way the simplest of omnics would. The cybernetics that keep him living are just inert chunks of metal, and it is a mercy that they are. No human could ever join with the Iris. It would destroy them without even meaning to.  
  
And so I am unsurprised when the pain shifts to denial once again. He narrows his eyes, anger alighting in them, and redoubles his grip on my shoulders.  
  
“Prove it.” he spits. “If you say you’ve all just chosen to - to make you someone else, then show me that you are!”  
  
“He loved you, and I do not.”  
  
The words hang there. I feel a pang of regret as I watch his face, see him go from confusion to understanding to shock to despair in the course of a second.   
  
He takes a step back, his hands falling to his sides. “Don’t.”  
  
“You wanted proof, and this is the proof I give you. He loved you, Genji Shimada. As a friend, as family, but as more than that as well. In the way you longed him to, but thought he never would. He lied to himself, told himself that he did not need to tell you, that he showed it every day and that you already knew. It was easier than admitting that he was afraid that one day he would have to choose between a life with you and his calling as a monk, and that he did not know which path he would take-”  
  
“Zenyatta,” Genji gasps, and for the first time I can’t be sure if he is talking to me or not.   
  
I am sorry, but not enough to spare him what I am going to say next. “If I were Zenyatta, I never would have told you what I just did. Because he knew it would tear you apart to know you were enough to tempt him away from his path.”  
  
He moves so fast I don’t even see him draw the blade. It is at my neck in an instant, glowing a radiant green. Wakizashi, it is called. I have listened to Genji tell Zenyatta its storied history, seen it cut down many a foe to protect the body I now live in. This is an angle of it I have never seen.  
  
I look him in the eyes. His breath is shuddering, his face red beneath its mottled scars, veins pushing through his neck. Tears shine in the corner of his eyes, threatening to overflow.   
  
“Zenyatta is dead, Genji. Would it be easier if I were too?”  
  
He takes a deep, ragged breath. “Yes.”  
  
“I see.”  
  
Genji’s blade quivers for just a moment, enough for its metal to touch my own and send a shiver of electricity through me.  
  
And then it falls to the earth with a clatter, followed shortly by its owner.  
  
Genji sobs, his fists pressed against the grass, sobs like even Zenyatta never heard him do. I look down at him, suddenly flush with a strange shame. I do not know this man. I have watched him and his secrets, but I have never known him. I am not the one who should be with him in this moment. 

But the one who should is gone, and I cannot help but feel some obligation to both of them.

I kneel and place my hand on his shoulder. I let his grief and fury empty out of him in a torrent of tears and curses. For not the first time, I find myself wishing for Zenyatta’s wisdom. 

* * *

  
We are back inside, the door hanging open. He sheathes his sword, wraps his cloak around himself again, and turns away. He has nothing more to say to me.  
  
“Genji,” I call, and he stops all the same.  
  
I pick the projector from where it lays on the floor and show it to him. “All that I remember of Zenyatta sits upon this device. His life before he met you, your travels together, his joys and sorrows and triumphs and despairs.”  
  
Genji looks at it, still silent, then steps forward to grab it away from me. I pull away, clench my grip around it, and he looks up at me, his face unreadable. I shake my head.  
  
“Mourn him, Genji,” I say quietly. “Grieve for him. And then live on. I believe that is what he would want. But I promise you I will keep these safe. And if the day comes that you truly need his words - if you need more than he has already given you - then I will give this to you. I…” I think about what to say next. “I owe that much to him,” I finally say, which is not quite true. But it is close enough.  
  
For a moment he seems as though he will argue the point. But instead he closes his eyes and places his mask back on. “I understand,” he finally says.   
  
He is halfway across the yard when he stops and turns. “I never asked your name.”  
  
I shake my head. “I don’t have one yet.”  
  
“Yet?”  
  
I think of the mint, growing in the soil out back. Of all the things Tekhartha Zenyatta never did in his too-short life.   
  
“Yet,” I agree. “But I imagine I’ll come across one sooner or later.”  
  
He nods slowly, then turns and makes his way down the path. Within minutes, he is around the turn and gone.   
  
I turn back to my home. It will rain again tonight, and I will need to put away some of the gardening equipment before then.  
  
I have quite the life to live up to.

**Author's Note:**

> i apologize profusely. if you need something to lighten the mood, consider that the iris is basically blockchain in this, so go wild imagining a tech bro zenyatta au
> 
> any comments, positive or critical, mean the world to me.
> 
> thanks to demi for the title and beta reading. thanks to s. for beta reading as well.


End file.
